Field Books: Battle in the Civil War/Battle in Africa

Vintage Wargaming seems to have been on a bit of an inadvertent Paddy Griffith kick recently, because of the Battlefields Magazine posts. This should be the last for a while.

Field Books was a collaboration between Paddy Griffith and illustrator Peter Dennis. The result was these two superb books - Battle in the Civil War, subtitled Generalship and Tactics in America 1861-5, by Paddy Griffith himself, and Battle in Africa 1879 - 1914.

I first had the Civil War book, and had been looking for the Battle for Africa book for a while before I came across a stack of them at a show - I think Dave Thomas was carrying them. Up to that point I hadn't made a connection between the two. Very well illustrated and structured almost in a scrapbook style - they strongly remind me of old Look and Learn magazines - they present masses of information in a very accessible way, in an A4 soft back format.

Howard Whitehouse is the author of the innovative Science vs Pluck rules for the Sudan. Battle in Africa is particularly noteworthy in including details of Belgian, German and Italian colonial adventuring, as well as he more usual French and British.

Both books seem to be fairly readily available at reasonable prices from the usual Internet sources. if you have an interest in either of these periods, I would strongly